Center for Taxation and Public Governance

· Common versus civil law drafting environment;

· Legislative interpretation;

· Process of tax reform;

· Workshop on drafting tax legislation

· Drafting amendments

Topics:

Price: € 4,000

Legal drafting is the crucial activity that gives tax policy decisions the legal basis for their implementation. The effectiveness of a tax law is enhanced if its words are meaningful, intelligible, well thought out, and well organized. Poor drafting often leads to substantial problems in implementation of a new tax law that could have been avoided.

 

In this course participants learn the basic tools in drafting tax legislation. During the theoretical introduction an overview is given of the principles of designing tax legislation: structure of the statute, comparative examples, problems encountered, legal environment, and the translation of tax policy concepts into legal text.

The participants start with a short introduction to the various legal families that can be distinguished worldwide and their impact on tax legislation. This is followed by a discussion on the underlying principles of taxation, e.g. equality, proportionality, and non-retroactivity. The framework of tax legislation is formed by the constitution, principles of law, other domestic legislation (e.g. commercial law, penal law, labor law, etc.), and international treaties.

 

Another important issue addressed is the interpretation methods used in tax legislation. International well-known experts will introduce this topic in perspective of their legal systems. In common law environment the interpretation has a different approach as it has in a continental European situation (civil law environment).

 

The theoretical part finishes with the explanation of the process of tax reforms: executive versus legislative powers within governments are explained, and central versus local government levies are discussed. Recent drafting experiences in the UK and New Zealand will also be discussed.

In the second part of this course, practical experience is gained through workshops given by experienced legal drafters. In this part, participants are working on a case study in which they have to translate tax policy concepts into legal text. In discussing their solutions, participants will get on-hand guidance in practical suggestions to improve the drafting process: brevity, transparency, avoidance of logistic language, section headings, structuring of sentences, etcetera.

Prof. Dr. Geerten Michielse

Our address:

T: +31 (0)20 638 0136

F: +31 (0)20 421-8730

M: +31 (0)6 3018 3025

E: geerten@michielse.com